Animals, and certainly humans, are the best judge of what makes them happy. This whale would have been better left in Mexican amusement park.

Op-Ed Contributor: ’Willy’ Didn’t Yearn to Be Free: "Keiko should probably never have been removed from his native pod. But, once that was done, nothing in his story suggests that this highly social mammal, imprinted on humans at an early age, was a serious candidate for return to the rough and tumble of life on the ocean waves. It is a classic anthropomorphic fallacy to believe that an animal's best interests are whatever a human would desire under similar circumstances.

In his latest domicile, Keiko was supported by an international team of experts who fed him dead herring at an annual cost of over half a million dollars and worked feverishly to continue to 'free' him. Despite all the money, time and sincere effort, Keiko did not die in the company of his own species, but up against a pier, seeking human consolation. "